August woke up twice during the night, enough to pull my arm for me to come up on the upper bed with him before he went back to sleep. Tons of rocket alerts rolled in on my phone after Carly left. I looked at Twitter and found out that Israel had carried out some assassinations. The closest alerts were for Holon, just south of Tel Aviv.
He slept until a little after 7. We read some of Earthling! then played Minecraft. He watched the Kurzgesagt video about making a moon base, then walked around telling me about his own moon base and new power sources. We discussed our plans for the day. He asked about some Minecraft knockoff sort of games he had seen on the App Store when we were looking for a 3d drawing app the other day. I was telling him how they had ads and cost money and were just copies of Minecraft. He replied, “I always think of things in a positive way…well, most of the time.”
He then had a Brother game where he was playing Minecraft. Sister saw him playing and what Myna was building. It turned out that Sister was a Minecraft building champion, but she was jealous of Myna’s building.
He went to the bathroom and brought up a video he had seen some time ago about life in the universe: “Remember the great filter from Kurzgesagt? I think it is already behind us…” It was the asteroid that hit Earth. “Maybe two…” The second will be in the future when we make aliens angry for the first time. If we survive we will have gotten past that filter. We hadn’t really talked about that video at the time, and I think he’s only seen it once.
We replayed the Brother being jealous of Baby Sister game (where Sister sews up the shirt, but Brother eventually loves Baby Sister) and it went on and on. I got him outside at 10:15. We played catch with the happy face ball he’d found. He sang a short song about God being a boy playing Minecraft and moving his finger on the screen to make wind.
We got on his orange bike. Our goal was to go find dry leaves for the compost. August immediately noticed that the white plastic ring that used to be on the right handlebar was missing. It was the song/channel changer that he would turn to get me to sing a different song. It probably came off when Eve was riding it, or pushing him around on the bike last week.
We didn’t have to go far, as someone had dumped a bunch of leaves in the junk area right across from us. He helped fill an Ikea bag full of them.We went back and he put some in the compost. We went inside and I made a pineapple, mango, and banana smoothie. He then did 15 minutes of alone time, then 15 minutes of Minecraft and repeated that. For lunch he had pizza and I had quiche. He wanted a Brother game where Brother was all dry and itchy: “It would be Minotaur funny, it would be earthquake-tastic.”
We finally got going to school. Because of the rockets, they had decided to close down school at 3. So I wanted to get the packages that Carly had in her classroom before that. One was the MEL Chemistry starter set, which finally came. The other was a book that Cherie had ordered.
We got there, and August ran down the hill to Carly’s classroom a couple times. On the way back out he was rhyming words and I used grief to rhyme with him. He didn’t know what it meant, so that was a word of the day. He also picked a leaf on the way out, and compared it to a solar panel. Actually, he clarified to me that, “It IS a solar panel.”
We then drove down to the big Tiv Taam and went grocery shopping. He picked out a peanut-y treat from the bins. We got out of the lot a minute short of an hour. As we got home he asked, “What’s indicator mean?” Not sure where that came from. As an example I said that the birds flying south were an indicator that winter was coming. He started practicing the word right away, with examples like “the sound on the street is an indicator that a car is coming.” Carly came out at that moment, and he used the word with her.
Inside he watched a Brave Wilderness episode where he is bitten by a centipede. We then did a Brother game where he was bitten by things.
Carly made spaghetti and we had it for dinner. She blended August’s sauce and he really liked it. We also did a lot of music time, with him making melodies on the piano and us playing them together, me playing down an octave.
We then opened the MEL Chemistry starter kit and played around with that. We used my phone in the VR goggles, and then installed the app on my iPad. August actually liked that better as it is easier to use. He found the part where you put together neutrons and protons to make nuclei, then add electrons to make an element. He was really into that, and we talked a lot about the numbers and what they meant, and what the different elements are used for.
We then skyped with my parents for a long time. It has been quite a while. He did really well with them. He did all of his piano playing and sang Yankee Doodle while singing it. He also did the milk and food coloring experiment for them again. He also made a potion over by the kitchen sink. One that he declared he wanted to show to Eve, so I saved it in the fridge.
Carly took him up and washed him. He came down and kept talking to them. We hung up at 9:15. He then got into playing with the rubber bands, putting them on the kitchen cabinets. It was definitely time to get to bed but he didn’t want to go up. Carly got him to agree to two more minutes. He took more of that. As he walked up, he said, “Sorry I said 2 minutes. I didn’t really think ahead.” I left them soon after that.
His moon base:
A funny dance:
Playing catch:
Running down the ramp to the classroom:
Playing Yankee Doodle:
Singing and playing Yankee Doodle:
His tune 1:
Playing it together:
